


Building Bridges.

by halelujah



Series: Marvel Discourse. [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner critical, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 20:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15057515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halelujah/pseuds/halelujah
Summary: Tony and Nebula talk while flying back to Earth.





	Building Bridges.

**Author's Note:**

> More of Tony and Nebula!
> 
> Can be read as a stand alone.

“What is that?”

Tony glances away from the large window in front of him, stars shooting passed as he keeps the Milano flying straight. 

“What’s what?” 

“The light in your chest,” Nebula says, gaze darting away from where she’s sharpening a blade to his right. “What is it?”

Taking one hand off the shifting gear, Tony taps a quick beat against the arc reactor. He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth, debating on telling a complete stranger his past. 

He had told Bruce once. Bared his soul, so to speak, to the Doctor, told him of his fears, his traumas and his heartaches. 

Sure, Tony had laid out on a couch and spoke to the ceiling, like one would actually do when seeing a therapist, but it had been the only way he could have gotten the words out. And he had felt better afterwards, despite his throat feeling as if he’d swallowed glass. 

Until that is, the response he’d gotten was a sleepy, bored, “I’m not _that_ kind of doctor.”

Telling a stranger his life story and seeing their disinterest would hurt a lot less than seeing Bruce’s. 

“They used to call me _The Merchant of Death_. Still do, if I’m being honest.” Tony starts, staring out into a starry abyss. “Because I built weapons that could kill people in the hundreds, if not, thousands. One of those weapons was called the _Jericho_.”

Nebula had stayed quiet throughout him talking. Never once rolling her eyes or sighing impatiently. Though it is a little hard to see the person you’re talking to, when you’re not facing them. 

It is, after all, why Tony spoke to the ceiling instead of Bruce. 

“So the circle of light is a power source.” Nebula surmises. “It’s keeping you alive.”

Tony swallows and nods. 

From behind him, he hears Nebula move from her spot and shift closer. He watches her from the corner of his eye. 

“But you said you removed it after the Mandarin.” She continues, tilting her head to the side and studying him with dark eyes. “Why is it back in your chest?”

He finds it hard to breathe all of a sudden. Can taste the overwhelming rust of blood in his mouth and fights against the memory of a cold, Siberian breeze. 

“I had no choice.” He says, clenching his hands around the console. “It was either this or let him win.”

Nebula shifts again. “Who?”

“Rogers.”

~

Nebula is silent as she sits in the pilot’s chair, her turn flying the Milano while Tony rests. 

“You could have killed them easily in that bunker. Your technology is ruthless, from what I’ve seen and heard. Capable of killing hundreds, if not thousands.” She says, throws his own words back at him, into the silence. “Why didn’t you kill them?”

Tony doesn’t even pretend like he hasn’t asked himself the same very question. 

“I wanted Barnes and Rogers, the _both_ of them, to hurt. For killing my mother and for knowing and lying about it.” He shrugs before pausing and sighing to himself. Quietly, he says, “Maybe because I didn’t want to hurt them that badly, maybe rough them up a little. Maybe I was just lashing out.”

Nebula turns her gaze and glances down at the arc reactor. 

“They didn’t get the same message.” She retorts. 

It isn’t said meanly and definitely not in a way Tony would take offence of. 

“Sounds like they were trying to put you down for good.”

He thinks of the therapy, the surgeries and the long nights where he struggled to breathe, where every little move sent pain flaring through his entire body. 

Tony glances away. “For a while, they had.”

~

“He forced us to fight one another.” Nebula tells him the second day of knowing one another. “Gamora and I.”

Tony ignores the scent of the food in front of him, only eats it for the nutrients he needs to keep going. 

“Thanos?” He questions. 

Nebula nods, her head downcast. “He wanted to see how we progressed under his ‘tender touch.’ My sister excelled, I didn’t.”

He’s almost afraid to ask. “What did he do?”

She smirks and it’s less arrogant and more bitter, more broken than even his fake, media press ones. 

“He tore pieces of my body away and replaced it with machinery and wires. He said i didn’t deserve to be alive, if I wasn’t going to fight like I was.”

He tries to hide his horror under a cool mask of indifference, she had done the same after all, but like her when hearing his story, Tony knows a little of his disbelief shows. 

“I’m positive I’m more machine than alive now.” Nebula whispers, darting her gaze up at him and then away. 

For an alien that could snap his neck with a quick flick of her hand, the action of looking away from his gaze, tells Tony that she’s still someone that lives and breathes, like him. 

Still human. Well. Sort of. 

“What was Gamora like?” He asks suddenly. 

Nebula’s head snaps up. “What?”

“Your sister,” Tony repeats, moving his plate away from him. “What was she like?”

“Strong. A great warrior and fighter.” Nebula starts, then pauses for a moment. “She was Thanos’ favourite and for a long time, I hated her for it. I hated what that meant for me when she always won; she remained untouched by him, while he twisted and hacked me into _this thing_!”

The last part is yelled with so much anguish, it echoes around the room. 

The fork Nebula was holding is bent into an odd shape between her fingers. Tony tries not to see the resemblance. 

“But before I left her, I saw her eyes when I told her I was going to kill Thanos. There was relief if I succeeded, but there was fear as well, if I didn’t.” She says softly. She makes this small gesture that he’s hesitant to call a shrug. “Maybe — maybe she wasn’t as untouched as I thought.”

 

~

“She willingly teamed up with the bad guy but then had a change of heart, when she realised the bad guy didn’t have any more use for her and her brother when he won.” Tony explains, frowning. “They refused to listen to me when I told them what she did to me, what she did to Bruce. They told me to get over my ego, that Wanda was staying and if I didn’t like it, they’d drop me in a hot second.” 

“So they allowed her a place in the home you created for them, despite your worries?” Nebula seethes. “I would have killed her where she stood!”

He doesn’t say he was too afraid of lifting a finger against her, or the fact that Wanda knew of that, and sometimes would terrorise him for the fun of it. 

“It was a little hard to argue when I had the entire team threatening to have Wanda replace me on the team.”

“It was your money and your facility they were using.” Nebula argues, something he’s heard before but in Rhodey’s and Pepper’s voice. “They’re lucky you didn’t take that away from them, and still, they treated you less than someone would a stray dog.”

“It took me a while to realise that.” Tony admits, feeling itchy for even saying this much. “That they were toxic. I guess having a lot of distance between us gave me a new perspective.”

“I’d like to meet Wanda. I’d like to see her try and use her measly powers on me.” Nebula says, looking gleeful in her musings. “She wouldn’t see my blades until they were covered with her blood.”

Tony shakes his head at her. “She’d have you under her control before you know it. If she had her way, you’d _never_ know it.”

“Magic has no effect on me. Thanos made sure of that.” Nebula replies, waving his concerns away.

Tony blinks in surprise. “It must be nice.”

Nebula gives him a grim smile. “Not at what the cost was.”

He doesn’t ask. 

~ 

“She stopped him,” Nebula whispers, that same night, sitting in the pilot’s seat as Tony sits beside her in his. “When he had me right where he wanted me, strapped to a device that stretched me apart, inch by inch. Gamora stopped the pain, even when I told her not to.”

He shifts around until the iPod he’d found, filled with eighties’ music, is in his hand again, so he can turn the volume down. 

“You were in pain, of course she would have stopped it.” He says. “He probably wanted to imply Gamora was next.”

“Oh, he did it for that too,” her voice shakes with barely held back anger, her fingers twisting around the steering shift loudly. “But Thanos wanted to know where the Soul Stone was, knew that Gamora was the only one to know of its location, and to get her to talk, he used me. He just got the satisfaction of hurting me as the bonus.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony whispers back, thinking of Obie. The Avengers themselves. Wanda. “I know what it’s like to be used for an end game.”

“I told Gamora the last time we saw one another, that all I wanted was a sister, that she was all I had while we were in the hell pit.” She continued, her voice thin and fragile. “Before I left, she told me that no matter what, I’d always be hers. If I had stayed, maybe she would have had a fighting chance against him.”

“Or maybe he would have forced her to watch her own sister being tortured even more.” Tony replies, reaching over and patting her shoulder once. 

He doesn’t even have the time to react, just feels a blade at his throat a second later, and sees Nebula bare her teeth from where she stands up above him. 

Tony holds up his hands, silently letting her see that despite the blade at his throat, he’s still at her mercy. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I just wanted to make you feel better, that’s all.” He explains, ignoring the way his pulse has skidded into a staccato rhythm.

The blade is gone a moment later and Nebula is back in the pilot’s seat, her body a long line of tension. 

It’s a horrible silence that follows and Tony struggles with trying not to fill it with useless babble. He feels like he’s just burnt a bridge that’s tentatively being built. 

Instead, he takes a deep breath in and says, “I mean it. There was no ulterior motive, but that shouldn’t give me a reason to touch you without permission. I apologise for taking any liberties I didn’t have.”

He knows what it’s like. After Siberia, even having Pepper, Rhodey or even Happy, touch him, sent him into a near panic. 

Tony had tried not to, good god, did he try, but every time they touched him, all he saw was Steve crouched over him, the shield poised for that killing blow. 

“You’re apologising. Why?”

Tony gapes, confused. “Because it’s the right thing to do? Because no one has the right to touch you, for whatever reason, but especially without your permission. It’s a whole thing on Earth and should be used all over the galaxy.”

“No one’s ever apologised before. They just — did whatever they wanted regardless if I said no or begged.”

Tony can read between the lines. He knows _they_ means _Thanos_ , because Tony has no doubt that if someone else besides the tyrant, had touched Nebula, they would have ended up in the situation that happened a few moments ago. 

Still, a burning need sears his veins. 

“No one is gonna touch you ever again.” He swears to her. “I won’t let them.”

Nebula faces him, equal parts curious and uncomfortable. 

“You’d promise yourself like that?” She asks. 

“For a friend? Yeah, I would.”

“Friend?” Nebula repeats. 

Tony nods. “I’d like us to be friends. We are planning to kill a tyrant together, after all. Might as well make it official.”

“This Rogers then,” Nebula replies, turning to face forward, just as Earth comes into view. “Will have to go through me first, if he wants to harm my friend again. He won’t succeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> If there’s any mistakes, I apologise. I’m posting this from mobile and on my lunch break. Just let me know if you spot any and I’ll fix them when I can.


End file.
